The Haredi bane

The story is by now familiar enough to make grown men gag in disgust. In Israel, the Haredi, the ultra-Orthodox (as opposed to the merely “Orthodox” who are called Dati) have raised their voices and thrown their excrement. One Dati women dared to sit in the front section of a public bus and was abused by Haredi passengers. Students who attend an all-girls school set up by Dati parents near an Haredi neighborhood in Beit Shemesh have to run a gauntlet to get to class. Little girls are called whores and have had eggs and bags of feces thrown at them. Apparently the sleeve and hem lengths the girls don are not long enough for Haredi standards of modesty even though they cover the arms and legs entirely. Oh, wait; examining a photo, I think I can see the stocking-covered ankles of eight year-old Na'ama Margolis, the little girls whose torment finally made the national and international news. Burkas, anyone?

Two weeks ago when city workers tried to remove signs (illegally erected) mandating the separation of the sexes on city streets (this is so familiar isn’t it—think 1938 after the Kristallnacht) new signs went up in defiance of the law. When police showed up to remove those, about 300 Haredi men threw stones at them and burned trash cans creating a foul stench and polluting the air with smoke as a supplement to their verbal outrage at little girls whose ankles show. Television reporters were attacked when they attempted to film these events.

Not surprisingly Israel’s president, Shimon Peres is on the side of the girls. Urging Israelis to attend a rally on their behalf he said, “Today is a test for the nation, not just for the police. All of us, religious, secular, traditional, must as one man defend the character of the State of Israel against a minority which breaks our national solidarity.” Tzipi Livni, formally foreign minister, currently the head of the Kadima Party which holds the largest number of seats in the Knesset, lent her support to the forces of sanity: “We are struggling over Israel's character not only in Beit Shemesh and not only over the exclusion of women but against all the extremists who have come out of the woodwork to try and impose their worldview on us.” Even right-wingers, religious and secular, oppose what the Haredi in their arrogance, their “my way or the highway” do. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on the police to act aggressively against violence aimed at women and urged Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to make certain that laws against excluding women from public spaces are enforced. Moshe Abutbul the mayor of Beit Shemesh, himself Haredi, decried the violence against young girls. “Beit Shemesh denounces such behavior,” he said according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Violent men belong behind bars,” he continued. “I urge the Israel Police to act with a firm hand against all the rioters,” adding that reporters should not make assumptions about all Haredi Orthodox Israelis.

The mayor, however, seems not to speak for the Haredi he claims to represent. Shlomo Fuchs, for one, seems not to have gotten the memo. He was arrested for calling a female soldier, Doron Matalon, who dared to sit in the “men’s section” of a public bus a whore and a shiksa. As she is 19 years old and not a mere eight, as is Na'ama Margolis, she at least knows what a whore is. Fuchs was joined in his insults by other Haredi passengers. The same day that Fuchs was indicted, female members of the Knesset's Committee on the Status of Women rode in the front of a bus Haredi demanded be segregated. They were insulted by male passengers who complained that the women were acting in a provocative fashion by sitting with men. The MK’s were accompanied by television crews. When these were spotted by brave Haredi, they opted not to get on the bus.

Our Father in Heaven, Rock and Redeemer of the People of Israel, bless the State of Israel, dawn of our redemption. Shield it with Your love, spread over it the shelter of Your peace. The rabbis of old believed that the Second Temple was destroyed because of senseless hatred. That was Jerusalem of old. We thought we were over that. Welcome to Jerusalem, 5772. According to Othello, Cyprus was for goats and monkeys. Jerusalem? It has Haredi.

The Haredi menace

I think of two Rosas—Luxemburg and Parks, and of the Grimké sisters—Angelina and Sarah. I think of Emily Pankhurst and of Susan B. Anthony. I think of Emilia Shrayer standing up to the Communist authorities in the old Soviet Union. I think of Nofrat Frenkel in Israel. All were women who knew something was wrong and risked everything to correct it. Some were killed, others were imprisoned, each was the object of ridicule. What do these women know about how things are or should be? Things are as they are because of divine ordinance. Read the bible. Slavery is divinely sanctioned; women must know their place because they are a pernicious, though necessary gender. “Now, I find woman more bitter than death; she is all traps, her hands are fetters and her heart is snares.” (Ecclesiastes 7:26) Enough said, right? Wrong. We also find “She is clothed with strength and splendor; she looks to the future cheerfully. Her mouth is full of wisdom, her tongue with kindly teaching.” (Proverbs 31: 25-26)

I think of the Women of the Wall and the arrogance of the authorities who arrested a woman for wearing a tallit at the Western Wall, still rankles. Granted, Nofrat Frenkel wasn’t stoned to death—for all their puritanical fussbudgetness the Haredim of Israel are not the Taliban. But they insist that they know the truth and that the truth shall deny others freedom. Just like the Taliban, just like the Puritans from whom Roger Williams fled. And we who are not ultra-Orthodox are asked to bend our wills to theirs, since they are the authentic Jews. Women must sit in the back of the bus, they insist; a 13 year old child converted by a Conservative rabbi has to be buried in a non-Jewish section of a cemetery in Spain by decree of rabbi Shlomo Amar, not a Spanish rabbi, but the chief Sephardic rabbi of Israel. So, not only do the Ayatollahs of the extreme right in Israel try to dominate in that country, they seek to extend their purview to the world. Recently mixed-group singing at the Wall was declared Vorboten so singing Hatikvah there to celebrate the return of the Old City to Israel is now a criminal offense. If I were a conspiracy theorist I’d suspect that the ultra-Orthodox who opposed the creation of the State of Israel have found a new way to destroy it—by alienating the vast majority of us who have entered the current century. It’s like supporting Hamid Karzai. Americans look at his corrupt regime and ask, for this we have to pledge our soldiers and our cash? For the Haredi we have to fight in Congress and the White House?

Avi Shafran, spokesman for the Orthodox Agudath Israel of America, has a strange argument. On the one hand “Israel is a country that has functioned with a certain understanding among its religious and not religious Jews. If the activists don’t want to alienate Jews, they shouldn’t thumb their noses at the traditional Jews in Israel.” The fault is all on the side of the progressives. On the other hand, it’s only a handful of the Haredi who protest the women and others who violate traditional standards. Most are in favor of a reasonable compromise, but there are always holdouts, he says. So, which is it—the fault is with the activists, or the fault is with the Haredi hot heads? Pick one. Oh, he also argues that the problem is with foreign Jews who are trying to impose their views on the traditional ways of Israel. Rather like Ross Barnett or George Wallace complaining about outside agitators coming to their states. The defenders of the benighted old ways always blame outsiders.

Modern Orthodox in America also feel the sting of their Haredi brethren who, not content to deny Reform and Conservative conversions, now challange the validity even of theirs.

Oh, lest it be thought that my ire is directed against the Haredi, it’s not. They are what they are. It’s Israel’s government which kowtows to them, allowing a minority within a minority to dictate public policy. That’s the shanda.